Published: May 07, 2005

Late in the afternoon of August 19, 2003, a suicide bomber drove to U.N. headquarters in central Baghdad. On the third floor of those headquarters, I was sitting with Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. special representative in Iraq, and some senior members of his staff . The human rights expert Arthur Helton and I were there to investigate the human costs of the war in Iraq and its aftermath.…

Published: March 02, 2004

I left for Baghdad from my home in Oxford last August 18. I remember waving and smiling at Annie, my wife, from the window of the bus to London’s Heathrow airport. The last words I shouted to her from inside the bus were “I’ll see you in a week!” In a little over 24 hours I was crushed, covered in dust and fighting for my life in the rubble that had been the United Nations headquarters in Iraq.